Research – Unité de Recherche Migrations et Société (Urmis)

word cloud representing the research group Crises, violence, uncertainty

Presentation of the research group “Crises, violence, uncertainty”

Coordination: Sabrina Melenotte and Nicolas Puig

This research group proposes to reflect on the way in which the social sciences make it possible to think about innovative approaches to extreme and massive violence, deaths and disappearances (forced or not), and other more latent ones that creep into everyday practices and imaginations. It aims to understand the multiple expressions of violence in order to make it an object of study that varies according to the context and covers very different situations…

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Theme 1. Migration and circulation

In the previous five-year period, Urmis researchers addressed the mobility of people and scientific, cultural and technical circulations in two different areas. The approaches to the mobility of people (theme 1) were rather influenced by a transnational perspective (or that of the ‘new migrations’) which, since the 1990s, seemed to allow us to go beyond the framework of nation-states to address an increasingly assertive interconnection between places and individuals that […]

Theme 2. Fabrications of alterity: racial issues and discrimination

The Urmis is widely recognised in France and abroad for its work on interethnic relations and the analysis of the fabric of alterity. In the previous five-year period, the laboratory emphasised a constructivist approach ‘which considers the ethnic and racial dimensions of collectivities and personal identifications as integrally relational and contextual social productions, and is interested in their relevance as categories of practice used in situations of conflict, control mechanisms […]

Theme 3. Power and belonging

Theme 3 of the Urmis is part of the evolution of the laboratory and the extension of its scientific perimeter (new Cs and ECs, reinforcement of pluridisciplinarity). These new collaborations create a synergy that invites us to reinforce and give greater visibility to the question of power in our work on migration and situations of co-presence. The appearance of this third theme in the project announces the strengthening of this […]

2. Program 4.2. Socio-economic uses of ethnicity

– Researchers: K. Argyriadis, G. Frigoli, N. Puig, C. Rinaudo Doctoral student : O. Pollet The reconfiguration of the majority/minority relationship through the development of creative and tourist industries represents a field that is strongly influenced by social and economic uses of ethnicity. Research undertaken since the 1990s on economic activities related to ethnic minorities has shown the existence and the development of “niche” markets in various domains. In this research […]

1. Program 4.1: Artistic creations, technological exchanges and religious dynamics

– Researchers: K. Argyriadis, G. Bonacci, J. Mallet, N. Puig, M. Timera, De. Vidal, Dom. Vidal Doctoral students : K. Maenhout, A. Rakotomalala Artistic creations will be of interest here, in particular when they are the work of people or of artistic milieus in circulation: migrants, exiles, ethnicized and racialized minorities, etc. We will consider relocalized and multi-localized productions and practices, but also artistic productions of which certain have the explicit […]

3. Program 3.3. Political use of space, relations of power, and identification

– Researchers : O. Hoffmann, C. Poiret, C. Médard, G. Schlemmer Associated researcher : C. Agudelo Doctoral student : J. Corredor This program examines the modalities of appropriation and control of spaces, by integrating the dimension of identity that can exist, without necessarily attributing a fundamental role to it. This should allow us to evaluate the articulations between different modes of identification and to better evaluate the processes of designation of territories and […]

2. Program 3.2. Anthropology of extreme exile

Researcher : M. Hovanessian This program aims to apprehend the resistant subjectivities, or spaces of subjectivation, in which state sponsored violence has produced the erasure of “anthropological places”, to be understood as places invested with the power to “reflect on place”, where the everyday life of a group becomes entwined with lineage, filiations, transforming the geographic place into a territory of ritualized, symbolized life. An anthropology of extreme exile inevitably combines […]

1. Program 3.1. “Recurrences of slavery”

Researchers : M-P. Ballarin, G. Bonacci, M-J. Jolivet Here we will be interested in the heritage of slavery in the contemporary period, in the long term repercussions of a forced migration, that of the slave trade, and in the contemporary recompositions of society and identity born of these changes. Taking into account the enduring strength of the status of slave, which has become a social category that is often concealed, allows […]

3. Program 2.3. Ethnic and racial group formation, discriminatory processes

– Researchers: A. Rabaud, Y. Gastaut, M. Cognet, P. Cuturello, J.-L. Primon, C. Poiret Associated researchers: V. De Rudder, M. Eberhard, M. Manier Doctoral students: E. Adam Vesina, R. Braud, M. Duclos, C. Gabarro, J.-M. Huctin, N. Puvilland, J. Scheepers, Y. Tahata, D. Trawale Racism is considered one of the forms that interethnic social relations can take. The research projects in this program question the practical modalities of racism through […]

2. Program 2.2. Immigration and minority situations : policy, discourse, and mobilizations

– Researchers: E. Cunin, G. Frigoli, Y. Gastaut, G. Ivaldi, C. Médard, A. Morice, A. Rabaud, J. Streiff-Fénart Associated researchers: A. Berghamaschi, J. Gartner, M. Manier, M. Nayrac Doctoral students: M. Clergeau, C. Gourdeau, Im Ahn Bak Ne, M. Lejeune, P. Montvalon, M. Petitjean, H. Sanders The enduring establishment, in Europe in particular, of the “question of immigration” in the public arena provides another framework for deciphering the experiences and […]

1. Program 2.1. Mobilities and figures of otherness

– Researchers: F. Lestage, S. Potot, C. Quiminal, J. Streiff-Fénart Associated researcher: Ph. Poutignat Doctoral students: M. Belqasmi, N. Liberona, L. Tassin The production of new categories of otherness can first be detected in the representations produced by migratory flows themselves. These flows do not only influence mobility, but also modify the relationship to otherness in many sending, receiving, or transitional countries. URMIS’s work in sub-saharan Africa, in the Maghreb […]

3. Program 1.3. Circulations and social recompositions

– Researchers : M. Hovanessian, M. Laëthier, N. Puig, S. Souchaud Doctoral Student: L. Rosenfeld A common history among different types of mobility (slave trade, colonization, world wars, and colonial conflicts), postcolonial and contemporary relationships between governments and societies that take a multitude of shapes, and current and past mobilities (migrations, circulations…) makes migration and migratory projects an integral part of the social representation that we seek to decipher. Research in […]

2. Program 1.2. Life cycle, family and mobilities

– Researchers: M. Lesclingand, F. Lestage, Z. Ouadah-Bedidi, S. Potot Doctoral students : L. Cuartas, Du Juan, S. Musinde Sangwa, D. Park Mobility profoundly affects all the stage of the life cycle, from the earliest years of childhood to death, including modes of family composition. Whether the nuclear family migrates as a unit or whether its members are dispersed geographically because of migration, these population movements are a basis for questioning […]

1. Program 1.1. Workers and circulating elites

– Researchers : V. Erlich, S. Potot, S. Souchaud, M. Timéra, Dom. Vidal Associated researcher : M. Paris Doctoral students : M. Anglada, A. Després, B. Dicko, Christelle Fitaten Hounsou, E. Hellio, F. Tandjigora, R. Dahhan Voluntary, economic, or student migration is more often than not considered by its participants as a means of upward social mobility, whether this occurs in the receiving country or in the country of origin. Whether it is […]